Not part of my Don’t Assume series, but when a client states “Why
is my database slow”", you need to determine if indeed the
database is slow.

Some simple tools come to the rescue here, one is Firebug. If a web
page takes 5 seconds to load, but the .htm file takes 400ms, and
the 100+ assets being downloaded from one base url, then is the
database actually slow? Tuning the database will only improve the
400ms portion of 5,000ms download.

There some very simple tips here. MySQL is my domain expertise
and I will not profess to improving the entire stack however
perception is everything to a user and you can often do a lot.
Some simple points include:

Know about blocking assets in your <head> element, e.g.
.js files.

Streamline .js, .css and images to what’s needed. .e.g.
download a 100k image only to resize to a thumbnail via style …

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